Bud -- An Update; Bloom's Major Novelists -- June 28, 2023

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I'm in my Russian 19th century literature phase.

Notes on Tolstoy here.

Leo Tolstoy, Harold Bloom Study Guide, c. 2002.

A fugue state: page 19, a narrative summary of War and Peace:

"Another Tolstoy moment opens Book Four. Nikolay, with Denisov, home on leave, halts before the threshold, remembering the beloved crooked steps."

I have no more than that one sentence on which to draw on, so I may be way off base. But the line, the "vision" as it were, immediately made me think of a fugue state in which "out of nowhere," an individual senses / experiences an out-of-body sensation / experience, transporting himself to another time. 

I have experienced such sensations on numerous occasions. The "out-of-body" experience I have is always peaceful and joyful. It lasts not very long. Later, much later, I will recall the experience and wish that it could have / would have lasted but knowing, ironically, for such an experience to last longer would destroy the magic. 

[Thinking of Einstein, time, and relativity -- perhaps I am wrong .... perhaps those "states" last a very long time, but moving at the speed of light to some other place or time and returning, it's as if no time has passed. Petit mal seizures always come to mind in these discussions.]

Geography: nothing like a war to learn geography. LOL In the book, a key character (and family) live in Bald Hills, Russia.

1812. Bald Hills, Prince Nicholas Bolkónski's estate, lay forty miles east from Smolénsk and two miles from the main road to Moscow.

Smolénsk in on the road, about midway, from Minsk, Belarus, and Moscow. 

Fast forward: General Prigozhin, of course, is "exiled" in Minsk.